REVIEWS 157 



The Tower of Babel must have been a place in which intercourse was easy in 

 comparison with that afforded by the platform of modern science. 



One request we venture to address to Mr. Doncaster— that with loving care, 

 such as Stevenson and Lafcadio Hearn exercised on their writings, he will revise 

 his booklet and here and there make the slight change that will give to each 

 sentence the exact shade of meaning he would wish it to carry ; further, that 

 he will consider if he cannot assist in promoting the reform that is needed to 

 make punctuation of some service to the reader. Unfortunately, compositors 

 and printers'-readers have acquired certain tricks and nearly always sow commas 

 to spoil conjunctions and in many other ways to interrupt sentences for no 

 discoverable good reason. If Mr. Doncaster would set an example when and 

 where conjunctions should not be used, he would do service to young writers and 

 might be referred to by Sir Clifford Allbut in his Hints on Essay Writing as an 

 example to be followed. For instance, taking the opening paragraph of the first 

 chapter, nothing could be better than the earlier part ; the final sentence is not 

 so felicitous — the comma before the first and as well as the second and are both 

 unnecessary and disturbing ; moreover, secondly and first might well be brought 

 into agreement. It is because the book as a whole is so charmingly written 

 that minor blemishes such as these — which perhaps a majority of readers will 

 disregard — are disturbing ; we trust we may not be accounted altogether pedantic 

 in preferring this request : our feeling is that unless more good examples can 

 be set, style must disappear altogether from our scientific literature. 



Alcoholic Fermentation. By Arthur Harden, Ph.D., D.Sc, F.R.S. 

 Monographs on Biochemistry. (Longmans, Green & Co. 4s. net.) 



This book will be of the greatest service to all serious students of the subject 

 discussed in its pages and Dr. Harden is to be congratulated on the manner in 

 which he has pieced together a clear and concise account of the gradual growth 

 of knowledge of the nature of the process of alcoholic fermentation ; he has 

 executed an exceptionally difficult task with conspicuous success. The opening 

 "Historical Introduction," written with the author's well-known literary skill and 

 with much feeling — the feeling of one who knows the subject he is writing about — 

 is a model of lucid exposition ; moreover the picture presented is very fascinating 

 and of extraordinary interest as an illustration of the slow and gradual way in 

 which conclusions were arrived at that students, at the present day, are led 

 to treat as commonplaces, if not as self-evident propositions — either because they 

 are fed to them in "potted" form by their teachers or because they gather 

 them from their text-books without in the least understanding the logical 

 process or method underlying the inquiries of which the conclusions are the 

 outcome. 



Chapter II. contains an account of the preparation and properties of Zymase, 

 the fermentative principle of the yeast cell separated by Buchner in 1897, the 

 discovery of which must ultimately be regarded as one of the great epochs in 

 biochemistry. The author's discovery that a phosphate is an absolutely essential 

 member of the company of agents concerned in the process of fermentation 

 is fully dealt with in the third chapter. The fourth is devoted to the co-enzyme 

 of yeast juice — the mysterious substance which apparently co-operates with the 

 enzyme and phosphate in determining the resolution of the sugar molecules into 

 alcohol and carbon dioxide. The action of certain inhibiting and accelerating 

 agents is considered in the fifth chapter. The sixth is devoted to the by-products 



